His previous post was a blustery harangue about how yankee forces have "captured" Fort Davis, Texas in August of 1862 and how this was a crushing symbolic blow for the confederates since Fort Davis was named after Jefferson Davis. To anybody who has driven the I-10 route from San Antonio to El Paso, Fort Davis is located smack dab in the middle of that vast empty 500 mile desert you cross, and a good ways south of the interstate at that.
Well, the desert mirages must've been getting to those yankee calvalry folks back in 1862 because their secret account of a "battle" there, which only capitan knows about and which he appears to have obtained via a fax sent from a west Texas kinkos, never happened! Fort Davis was never captured by anybody and it's unlikely that the confederates even knew that capitan's tiny yankee calvalry group had even visited the place.
Looking back at the REAL history, we learn that Fort Davis, being of no use since it was in the absolute middle of nowhere, was abandoned by its tiny confederate garrison sometime in early 1862. It turned into rubble shortly thereafter when the Apaches discovered it was a source of free bonfire wood. Then one day in August a stray yankee cavalry patrol stumbled into the area, found the abandoned and wrecked Fort Davis, set up their campfire there for the night, said "gee, what a dump" and left the next morning! And so went the "Battle of Fort Davis" - doubtless a vital union "victory" in their efforts to conquer Texas, even though nobody set another foot in the place from the morning they left until 1867. Then again, when your side gets whupped as badly as the yankees did at Sabine Pass, I suppose it's natural to start making up "victories" for yourself out of thin air.
ROTF!
Your post caused me to look up some contemporary information about the West Texas country the troops passed through. From the diary of Confederate soldier A. B. Peticolas about the spring runoff of the Rio Grande during the trip back to San Antonio after the invasion of New Mexico. The river is too dammed up to flood like that any more. [Source: Rebels on the Rio Grande by Don E. Alberts]:
"The Rio Grande river well deserves its name. In places it is nearly a mile wide, and the water runs far out into the bottoms through the natural sacos that abound in the valleys. ... We had to push and pull our wagon this morning 2 or 3 miles through the heavy sand..." [June 10, 1862]
Here is a another description of this trip, the part after the troops had to move away from the Rio Grande. [Source: The Confederate Invasion of New Mexico and Arizona by Robert Lee Kerby]:
"Short of rations, scattered in detachments, lacking in mounts and arms, the remnants of Sibley's brigade marched from water-hole to water-hole, desperately trying to find wells which had not been polluted with dead sheep by the Indians."
From Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory by Steve Cottrell:
"The Californians reclaimed abandoned Fort Bliss and Fort Quitman for the Federal Government. Finally, 200 miles into Texas, they rode into Ft Davis and found one Confederate soldier. Long dead, his remains were pin-cushioned with arrows.""All during the summer of 1862, groups of ragged, starving soldiers straggled into San Antonio's dusty streets."
Now a personal observation. My parents drove us through West Texas in August in the 1940s. Our car radiator boiled over from the heat. We pulled over at what had been an old stage coach station. We were stranded miles from anywhere in the broiling heat. Fortunately, another driver appeared. He told us that there was a spring a couple of hundred yards down the hill. It made sense, of course, that a stage coach station would need a water supply. We carried everything we could that could hold water down the hill and found the spring. After a couple of trips through the yucca and cactus, we succeeded in refilling the radiator.
Ah, those were the days.